Voices from Our Power Detroit Participants

July 16, 2014

Interviewing
Our Power Detroit participants and documenting their testimonies was quite
uplifting and rewarding. Many, both native and non-native Detroiters, shared a
fluid commonality among their testimonies, a conscious passion to change our
planet’s current trajectory through a just transition. One testament, by Ms. Dorian Willams of the
Better Future Project, left a lasting impression on me. Ms. Williams articulated a testimony not only
embellished with raw, beautiful empathy for Detroit, but an affinity with the
meaning of “Our Power”. She captured the essence of grassroots empowerment,
expressing her experience as such:

“I came out here because I felt
called to be here… There’s such incredible work being done in Detroit…. I felt
drawn here by the people who invited me….from EMEAC and I believe in the power
of the work that they are doing.

…to be here today… seeing what
almost one hundred hands can do to revitalize this building, that can provide
something as simple as water; I mean, it’s insane to me and horrifying that a
city would turn...or the emergency manager, would turn its back on hundreds of
thousands of people and deny them the basic rights to life like water. And so
it’s inspiring and beautiful for me to witness people taking that back and
reclaiming the ability to meet our own needs from the communities and not from
corporations and not from governments, but from ourselves; and I guess that’s
what our power means to me as well. The ability to take power away from those
that abused it and got us into this mess, and to remember that by replacing it
in the hands of people, who have had to struggle under this system, are the
ones that are going be able to get us out.

I think the atomization and the
undermining of people and communities…is exactly what got us here; and it’s
only going to be the reclaiming of community and reaching back and connecting
with each other, that we are ever gonna get out of it. And so I feel really
honored and grateful and inspired to be here.”

Submitted by Brittany Anstead, EMEAC Intern sho served as
documentarian of the Our Power Detroit gathering